On Passion Sunday in 1417 (28 March) a sermon known by its
scriptural theme as ‘Accipiant qui vocati sunt’ was delivered at the
general council of the Church then assembled in the south
German city of Constance. Three centuries later it was edited by
Hermann von der Hardt who characterised ‘Accipiant’ as ‘by far the most
severe sermon in which the enormous crimes of prelates – especially love
of money, ambition, luxury and ignorance – are revealed with the
greatest liberty and are vehemently reproached, so that it is a wonder that
the council heard it patiently’. In an earlier publication containing
excerpts from this sermon, Hardt had described it in similar terms as
being ‘not unlike a burning furnace in terms of its fiery passion and its
vehement attack on the vices of the clergy’. More recently Heinrich
Finke clearly agreed with these appraisals in describing ‘Accipiant’ as a
‘scharfe Reformpredigt’, for he did not bestow such adjectival emphasis
on any other reform sermon listed in his register of the Constance
sermons. Paul Arendt, a student of Finke's and the author of the only
monograph devoted to the many surviving sermons from Constance,
repeatedly commented on the severity of ‘Accipiant’, especially in his long
chapter on ‘das Hauptthema unserer Prediger: Behandlung der Frage
der kirchlichen Reform’.
Hardt ascribed this sermon to Vitale Valentine OFM, bishop of
Toulon. However, as the following analysis will show, it is certain that
this ascription was based on conjecture and that another preacher
actually delivered the sermon. Hardt's only source for his edition of
‘Accipiant’ was an Erfurt manuscript which is now in the Schlossbibliothek
at Pommersfelden. Because this lacks a rubric or colophon identifying the
author of the sermon, Hardt's attribution must have been inferred from
internal evidence. Thus began the long tradition of Vitale Valentine's
authorship of ‘Accipiant’ which has previously been accepted without
question by scholars of these conciliar sermons.
